Writings by Cole Huffman

Category: Family

Page 2 of 5

Jun 8

Children can be a person’s proudest possession. But in today’s climate, Joseph Epstein writes, it is far from clear who, between parents and children, possesses whom. In the same essay (“A Son at Tufts, A Daughter at Taffeta”), he employs the term “family egotism,” which he attributes to Tolstoy. Epstein says family egotism roughly approximates to not caring if the whole world goes to hell so long as all is well with our little Kevin.
An internment camp...
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Aug 5

Want to feel old? Incoming freshmen high schoolers were born this century. You should pop open one of those cans of Pork and Beans you stashed for Y2K to commemorate it. On January 1, 2000, the day the world did not end, our oldest child was three years old. He’s a college freshman this fall, leaving home this month, guitar strapped to his back. My mother, an editor by profession, wrote a poem to mark the moment I left for college 28 years ago. A poem, you have to agree, is a classier move...
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Jul 10

I regret to inform you that God taught me nothing on
my recent sabbatical except how wickedly precarious it is to successfully
evacuate the bowels of an RV’s waste tank. I shoulded myself (say it aloud and the pun is obvious); that is to
say I should have lifted the hose at
the tank connection to ensure the black water stuck in the neck of the hose fully
emptied before disconnecting. It was a mistake I didn’t repeat again.
I’ve never really liked the What did God...
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